6 Part Torchwood S4?

NJ.com’s Alan Sepinwall spoke to Russell T Davies recently about the airing on BBC America of the Doctor Who 2008 Christmas special The Next Doctor and the upcoming Torchwood:Children of Earth – and got some interesting answers.

As far as Torchwood and Children of Earth are concerned, Russell seems to be expecting a fourth series which may well take yet another different format.

“We can do all sorts of things. The six-part weekly thriller is another standard British format that we haven’t tried yet. That’s what’s nice in this digital world: the platforms change, the digital tier gives you new options, and Torchwood‘s been at the forefront of it, since we started on a digital channel.”

The truth – if you didn’t know already – about what happened to Martha Jones joining up with Torchwood is also revealed. Simply a case of clashing schedules.

We’re friends, we’re in constant contact, and we were able to adapt, so we brought in Cush Jumbo as Lois Habiba, who’s kind of the Martha figure. She doesn’t act like a Martha clone at all, she’s much more innocent and out of her depth.

Most interesting however is how RTD feels about one of his great masterstrokes – the strong hint that Jack Harkness is the Face of Boe.

There are these spin-off books and comic books, and every now and then I’ll see a script for one where they say definitively that he’s the Face of Boe, and I always stop those from being printed. I have my own personal theories, but the moment it became very true or very false, the joke dies.

Is it a joke? I don’t think anyone was laughing – either Jack is in the early stages of becoming an immensely tragic and almost immortal figure who at some point in the future gets decapitated and sent back to the beginning of time, or he doesn’t.